ROCKING AND REMEMBERING CHRISTMAS IN MEMPHIS

                   


December 2 was Daddy's birthday. He was born in 1910 and died in 1983. My younger brothers and I talked about him on Friday ; and I decided to tell you a little about Christmas in Memphis 1939.


Daddy was only 29 then...seemed like he would forever be young, and I would forever be that little six year old girl with a one year old baby brother. (Five years later there would be another little brother.)But now I want to tell you about 1939.


                                 

That September we lived  in a duplex only a few blocks from the now famous HUMES.  Elvis, both my brothers, and I would graduate from there later.


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I just loved that neigborhood!! No kids to play with. But there were so many interesting people I "visited" every day. I loved to talk and they were willing listeners.  Ma Spencer lived two doors from us in a large, once elegant  house; to me it was like visiting royalty.  I guess she could walk, but I never saw her do so. I sneaked  bubble gum to her, and she let me gently touch the keys on her piano, the first piano of my life.


The house next door was also a nice larger house. The family had two adult daughters who worked downtown. We sat on the grass in their front yard in the evenings  and  talked. One took me to a movie and window shopping on Main Street by streetcar.




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Our duplex was more modest. We lived on the north side and Mr. and Miz Crabtree lived on the south side. 
 They were as old as Ma Spencer but could get around like younger people. Anyway, they and others on the street contributed to my having an interesting and happy six year old life.  Early I learned to enjoy older people just as much as other children my age. That attitude lasted all my life; now I am 78, but I remember well and with affection those friends of long ago.


Something happened that caused us to move: I began the first grade.  Gordon Elementary was a long walk away, but it was a wonderful, wonderful school.
                                                                

The first few mornings and afternoons my marvelous mother walked with me carrying my little brother. She did not have a car.  The third morning I could see she was so tired, I insisted I could finally walk home alone. It was only a few miles.


 A good part of the way I was walking with other children. But gradually they turned off down their streets and into their own homes and I was left walking alone. You guessed it!  I got lost. Nothing looked familiar to me. I bet I had been jabbering when I should have been looking the other times I had walked that route.  I meandered around the area getting more and more afraid as it grew dusk. 
                                


Suddenly I saw "Ain't" Belle, my grandmother's sister, sitting on her porch swinging. "You need to get on home, Ann. My heavens! " She lived near us, and I suddenly realized where I was. I didn't even admit I was lost, just waved and ran the rest of the way.



Mother was terrified that something had happened to me. And the very next day she found and rented an entire little house for us just down the street from Gordon. It cost more than our duplex, but she did it!!!Like so many things she did for me!!


                         
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If I thought I had it good before, I had it great now. Gordon Elementary School 1-6 was a wonderful world away from home. I believe now that it was equal to any of the private schools as for beauty and quality education.


Just inside the front door to the left was a wonderful open staircase, sort of like GONE WITH THE WIND. It was wide. The banister was of shiny mahogany. Sometimes the boys would sneak a slide down it!


At the landing were beautiful windows where we turned to the next floor.Our auditorium was a separate building, not a little gym/lunchroom with a small stage like we see now. It had theater seats, tall windows down both sides, and a good size stage.  
                                       
Christmas season began  early in December. There was a parade on Main Street downtown. My aunt Kathleen was 17 and on the Humes float. She was like a star to us. She was dressed like a cat, so we couldn't see her face but recognized her legs even though they were red from the freezing temperature that night. Throngs went to the parade. People sat on the curb and then stood several deep. The floats were beautiful and the marching bands had the first horns I ever heard. Daddy could play guitar, fiddle, and mostly stand up bass, so I was familiar with those instruments. 


     
Downtown was beautifully decorated. Before the age of malls all our elegant stores were on Main Street. BRYS, GERBERS, LOWENSTEINS, & GOLDSMITHS. We would start with BRYS and work out way south to  Goldsmiths. The display windows were gorgeous, some having moving elves, reindeer, and the like. In Court Square, Santa Claus was seated on sort of throne. Children lined up to talk to him.
But not me!! He was obviously a fake; Santa had too much to do at the North Pole to be sitting there day in and day out!  
                                  


Here is a "maybe memory."
Peabody Hotel was gorgeous. Although I can't remember now if I saw it in 1939 or a year or two later.

The general look of it fits into the way I remember Christmas of  that year, shimmering!!
  


We went to see a new movie, which I would see many more times throughout my life.


 


A new song came out in time for Christmas: RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER. My friends and I learned all the words and remember them til this day. 

Our classroom at Gordon was decorated before our home was. We cut out stars, bells, and snow flakes to hang on the window. We  put our drawings with crayons on the wall. We sang Christmas popular songs and carols.


Since we used a cut tree in those days, we only put it up a few days before Christmas. When we got all the bought and homemade stuff on it, it was to me perfect.


Mama Bert, (my grandmother), and Auntie drove down from Dyersburg the eve before Christmas Eve. Mama Bert spent the night with us. So Christmas Eve morning, she would go all through the house calling out"Christmas Eve Gift!" Anyone she would catch was supposed to give her  a gift.   


Mama Bert brought a huge hen, cornbread dressing, and lots of boiled custard plus a fresh coconut cake that "Ain't" Teen in Ripley had made and sent by Auntie.  
Mother made a multitude of things.


On Christmas Eve afternoon, Daddy brought home the huge basket from the company where he worked. The main item in it was an enormous whole ham, which Mother baked. I can still smell the aroma.
  Other things were nuts, candy, fruit,  &  and crackerjacks.


We had our main family meal that night: Mama Bert's chicken and dressing.  


Christmas morning the neighborhood children all ran to each other's houses "to see" what Santa brought. We got more or less the same things. I don't remember a single thing we got but must have been satisfied because I DO remember squeals of delight??!!! 
( I just now talked by phone with the brother who was a year old baby then, and he says he doesn't remember what he got either! Haha! and the other brother wasn't born yet, so I didn't ask him!!)
 I still remember a neighbor boy who got a complete football outfit  and just stood there holding his football, wishing someone else had gotten the same gift from Santa.  I also remember some children who got a nice sled. It didn't snow in Memphis much in those days(??), and certainly not that Christmas. They just dragged that sled around in the grass and pretended there was snow. I admired their attitude.
                                         
Meanwhile Mother laid the ham and other wonderful dishes, that didn't have to be served hot, & spread them  out over a 6 ft. table Daddy had made. She had a long cloth UNDER the food, and also a long cloth OVER it.  This was a custom begun back in the country to keep flies off the food. When company came by, they simply moved back the cloth and helped themselves.  I especially remember the big bowl of green grapes, maybe because we didn't have grapes all the time. 


Mother's relatives and Daddy's relatives all knew each other, because they were all raised near Ripley. So there was no having to get acquainted! On Christmas day many adults and children came by before the day was over. So that is Christmas in 1939 as I remember it. 
                                          


When WWII broke out in 1939, Memphis was finally in pretty good shape economically. It had come out of the depression.We had a population of around 250, 000 people.  
I didn't yet have a vocabulary with words about war: enemy, ghetto, bombing, evacuation, concentration camps.


 1939 England had not been at war long enough for circumstances to be dire, but thousands of children had been evacuated out into the country to avoid future bombing. Surely they were lonely. "Lonely" was not in my vocabulary. And in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, children even my age were living in terrible DANGER every day.  And Jewish children were already in ghettos and some even in concentration camps, many just my age.  The word ghetto was also not in my vocabulary, nor was the concept  of concentration camps.   


Christmas 1939 in Memphis was such a happy time for me. Now I know my happy world was indeed a small world.




Love, annie in memphis



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